


Burning Too Brightly

by Vodkassassin



Category: Bleach
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Gore, Fix-It of Sorts, He’s very intelligent but like, High INT/Low WIS, Hisagi Shuuhei is a GOOD PERSON and he deserves to be happy, Hurt Ichigo, Ichigo has bad PTSD, Ichigo is pretty dense, Ichigo needs a hug, Kind of dark, Kisuke Can and WILL spoil a child, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shiro and Zangetsu have their boy’s back no matter what, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Unohaha is World’s Most Terrifying Mom, Well - Freeform, as it goes, back to the past with a different name, basically... ichigo is just baby, but for now he suffers, he tries his best, he’ll be fine EVENTUALLY, i say to myself as i write this, injured ichigo, let my boy have some hope in his miserable existence, mostly - Freeform, not terribly but it’s for comedic purposes ok, parental Kenpachi kind of?, probs gonna be gay, some other characters also suffer too, the entire first chapter of this is basically ichigo procrastinating life I’m sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2020-10-19 18:51:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20662040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vodkassassin/pseuds/Vodkassassin
Summary: He lies to himself for as long as he can, but eventually everyone has to face their own truths, and this is his: he’s in the past. If context clues ring true, he’swayin the past. Maybe too far.He’s so tired, all he wanted to do was sleep, and perhaps never wake up, but now there’s just too muchexistingagain, all around him, and how is he suppose to fade into nothing when there’s a whole world out there for him to protect?He failed last time. He might fail this time, too. He’ll try anyway.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know, I’m suppose to be updating Ear to the Wall right now, and it will be updated soon! I’m working on the next chapter as you read this, I promise. I just wanted to get this one out there too. It’s been sitting in my docs for a while, I thought it was time I take it for a walk, maybe play around with it, see how it goes.

It’s hot.

Not quite stifling, but the heat permeates the air around him, pulsating in a way that makes it seem almost alive, and maybe it is, because it’s certainly targeting him. It feels like it’s attracted to his body, like he’s a powerful magnet pulling in every particle of metal within a hundred foot radius, like it needs to cook him in order to feed hungry mouths. He can feel his skin absorbing it hungrily, starving for it, but it’s too much, he can barely breath under the weight of it. Seems his body never got the memo, though, as if laps for more, and the ever present heat is all too eager to provide. 

He’s tired. He wants to sleep. But it’s too hot. 

He rolls over and presses his face into fallen leaves. They crunch softly against the skin of his cheek. A stem prods gently at his eyelid, begging for it to open, but he keeps both firmly shut. He’s afraid that, if he were to open his eyes, he’ll know exactly where he is. 

He kind of already knows. He’s praying, he doesn’t want it, but…

His prayers have never been answered before. 

He’s always had to do everything himself. 

He curls in on himself, dead foliage crackling beneath him. He’s too tired to do anything now. He’s been tired. If he just lies here, and sleeps, and doesn’t get up to try, well—there’s nobody left to fault him for it. 

  
  


It’s too hot to sleep. 

He’s so, so tired, but he’s too hot, and no matter what position he shifts into, he can’t find one comfortable enough to rest. Here, his shoulder aches; here, his arms falls asleep worryingly quickly; here, the leaves poke at his face and keep him awake. He turns onto his back, and there’s a rock there. And it’s still too hot. 

Tears prick at his eyes. He takes in a shuddering breath, and sits up. 

All he wants to do is cry, but it’s too hot for even that. 

He opens his eyes and sees a forest. The trees are taller than they probably should be. They reach up for a blue, cloudless sky like bony fingers dripping in moss. He pushes himself onto his feet, so achingly slowly and it still takes less time than it should. 

He takes a step, and stumbles back down again. The ground cushions his fall—it’s far too soft, for all the sticks and rocks that litter it. Or, maybe he is too numb to feel them. 

He pushes back up and trudges forward with the pace of a snail, bare feet dragging behind him in the dirt. He leans forward and presses his face flush against the bark of a tree. It’s still too tall, taller than it should be. Taller than he _ wants _ it to be, because maybe the issue here is that he himself is too _ small_. 

A light breeze comes through, chasing away the heat for the split second it takes for him to breath in, and then it comes back with three times the weight than before. He slides down the trunk to the ground again. His throat is dry. There’s something there, just on the outside. He tries to swallow, but he can’t. 

He closes his eyes again. 

  


Maybe he sleeps. It doesn’t feel like it, but maybe he does. 

He doesn’t feel rested, but there’s too many instances where he blinks in the sunlight, feeling dust particle brush his eye lashes, and when he opens his eyes he is suddenly plunged into night, stars shining above his head, too brightly for him to look directly at them. 

He climbs the tree anyway. He feels like he needs to be closer to them, and the trees are so very tall. 

It’s a lot harder than he’d expected. His fingers are too numb to feel the bark beneath him—it should feel rough, but instead it’s smooth, like marble. Except when he pulls his hand away, there are scratches against his palm and minuscule tendrils of blood dribbling down his wrists. 

He doesn’t feel anything. 

Seems like it takes him days to reach the top of the tree. There’s the sun, then the stars come out and twinkle at him, and make him shield his eyes but keep climbing nonetheless. It’s only once the branches begin to grow sparser around him, thinner, with less leaves, that he’s able to see the moon. There’s a branch higher up that’s just wide enough for him to fit snugly into the curve of its arm. He thinks, faintly, that he should be too big, too heavy, that he should never have made it this high with the thinness of the branches, but he isn’t. The branches don’t break. He’s too small to even worry about that being a problem. 

The stars seem like they should be warm to him. That they’re pinpricks of fire, clustered in shapes and words, spelling a message out against the sky that he should be able to read, but he can’t, because he just doesn’t know the language. The moon hangs heavy against the deep black, royal blue expanse. It’s always there, just ahead of him, no matter which way he turns to look, always filling up the sky. Except then he blinks, and it’s gone, and the sun is shining down at him, not bright enough to be the sun that it says it is,and always far too hot to let him rest. 

  
  


There’s a band around his throat. 

It’s coarse, like some type of cloth, but when he tries to dig his fingers underneath it, it hurts as if he’s carving into his own skin. He leaves it there, and his hands come away with a faint dusting of some type of black particle. It brushes off easily and the breeze takes it away before disappearing like it was never there. 

There’s a streak of blood against the side of his pinky. He presses his palm against his neck and finds some more. He wipes the rest of it off his neck and then wipes his hands on the cloth of the rags he’s worn but never took notice of until now. 

Something deep in his head shifts. It doesn’t make a noise, but there’s a wave of an odd _ something _ that emanates from it, around the circumference of his cranium and down the vertebrae of his spine, to reach for the band that encircles his neck. It stops there, and doesn’t move. He feels like there’s something lodged in his throat, but no amount of coughing or choking manages it dislodge it. It eventually dissipates on its own, but for a long while he’s unable to breath around it. 

Darkness encroaches his vision, and he wakes up at the base of the tree. 

  


He lies there for a moment, staring up at the innocent canopy above him. It’s an odd sort of daylight, too pale for that suffocating heat yet. The sunlight is too weak to shine through the branches and reach for him just yet. He tilts his head to the side, and gasps around the uncomfortable pressure that suddenly puts its full weight on his torso. 

There’s a long, thin branch poking out from his right side, covered in some type of rust. His head pounds ominously as he tries to sit up, and loses his breath halfway through. He falls back down, and looks at the branch. It’s not rust, it’s blood. It’s dried, and the branch is still embedded into his side. 

He turns his head to look ack up at the canopy. That’s right, he thinks to himself. He fell. He remembers reaching blindly for the stars in his descent, branches whipping at his numb skin from all sides. They’d twinkled down at him, too far away. 

Eventually the sun comes out fully, heat pulsating down at him in full blast. Except now, it’s lost its grasp on him. His body is chilled, too cold, and no matter how it laps hungrily at the sun rays that seem attracted to him, he can’t keep warm. All that time wishing for a reprieve from the heat, and now he wants it back so desperately he might sob. 

He rolls over and yanks the branch out of his side. It’s slow going, because he’s too numb to get a good grasp around it, but when it does come, it comes with a spray of crimson. It gushes out steadily for a moment, and then pulses uncomfortably, drizzling like a waterfall and leaking into the dried leaves crunched beneath his body. 

He struggles upright, and starts walking under the sun. 

  
  


There’s a lake in the distance. There first signs he gets of it are the scent of fresh water on the air, and the glint of sunlight reflecting off its surface through the trees. It’s almost as bright as a star, and it makes him blink for quite a while before his vision clears again. 

It takes—a while. He isn’t sure how long, but a while, to get to the lake. Waves of after lap gently at its shore, it’s so clear he can see the smooth stones at the bottom, and he is for a moment frozen with both the desire to jump into it and the terror that the stones at the bottom would slice him to ribbons warring inside him. 

He settles for sitting beside the waterline, hesitantly slopping his feet into the water in front of him. It carefully twists and turns around his toes, surging up to tickle his calves before receding again with only a splatter of droplets left behind to prove it was even there. 

He scoots further up, until he sitting in it, and then lies down. Sometimes be can feel the water creep up his back, sliding back down and then up again, like it’s caressing him, petting him, telling him that all will be well. 

  


He opens his eyes a while later, and there’s eyes staring back down at him. 

He blinks, and sits up. They lean away, settle back on their haunches, just a kid, watching him, and open their mouth. 

“Your stomach’s been growling.”

He tilts his head to the side, and glances down. If it had, he’s never heard it. The woods around him have been eerily quiet for a forest, the entire time he’s been here. He’s just beginning to think that maybe they shouldn’t be. 

They reach out and poke his stomach, and he flinches back with wide eyes. Oh, they’re _ real._

And just after he was starting to believe that he was the only one in this world. It…

It would have made sense, sure. 

“That’s not a good sign, you know,” the kid says to him. Their face is grim, like they’re giving him back news. Nothing new there. “Not here.”

“Here,” he tries to ask, but his throat is dry, too rough, too full of _ something_, and he chokes on it. 

The kid pats him on the back, and then hauls him to his feet, eyeing the gaping, bloody hole in his side with a furrowed brow. 

“Rukongai,” the kid tells him, confirming exactly what he didn’t want to hear. And then, “Come on… if you’re that hungry, we’ve got food.”

He doesn’t want the food. He’s not hungry. His stomach feels like it’s going to eat him instead, but he swears he’s not hungry. He’s just tired. 

He follows after the kid. He can’t not, they’re dragging him by the arm. He’s too tired to put up a fight. 

  


“If he’s hungry, then he should leave.”

The kid that dragged him here crosses his arms with a scowl. “We’ve got _ food_, though—“

The older kid, black hair and eyes, seems in charge of the little camp of hollow-eyed children that sit around them and stare, won’t budge. 

“Yeah, and it’s for _ us _. We don’t have enough for him, and,” the tall kid eyes him tightly, “if he’s as hungry as you say he is, then he can’t be here.”

“But—“

“It’s _ dangerous_, Kotoro! They’re always gonna be out there! And they can _ smell _ it! I’m not gonna let your little stray lead them right to us, we’ll get _ eaten_!”

Kotoro’s face screws up, and he looks like he’s going to argue some more. The children around them are silent, still staring. Their cheeks are sunken in, and they look more like skulls than the faces of people. He reaches forward to tug on Kotoro’s tunic, and they look down at him with shiny eyes. 

“I’m not hungry,” he tells them, finally. He reaches up and rubs at the band around his throat. It itches. “I don’t want the food.”

“You're lying,” they say.

He shakes his head, glancing down at his stomach. It does make a sound, after all, but he can barely hear it. Despite that, Kotoro gazes at him accusingly. 

He shakes his head again. “I don’t want the food.”

He takes a step back. 

“Where are you going?”

He takes another step, and then turns around. He starts walking. 

“Wait!” A hand grabs the back of his shirt. The tall boy with the dark hair and the rest of the children stare at them without saying a word. “Where are you going?”

He pauses. Takes a breath. 

Points to the sky, where stars are twinkling down at them, visible above the smoke that wafts up from the wall fire that sits in the very center of them all. 

Kotoro lets him go, and he leaves. 

  


There’s a strange pressure in his side, where the branch impaled him when he fell. He thinks maybe it’s suppose to be pain, sharp and niggling and insistent, but it doesn’t even throb. It’s just an odd weight that’s settlin against his rib cage and refuses to move. He feels heavier with each step he takes. 

He goes back to the lake. This time there’s no hesitation as he trudges straight into the water until it reaches his thighs. He stares down and can almost see his face, when he leans away from the sunlight a little bit and gives it room to reflect off the glassy waves. 

There’s still the orange hair. The brown eyes are wide and young and blank. He thinks maybe they should be full of _ something_, but—no. They’re just eyes. 

He’s wearing rags. The band around his throat is an inch thick and blacker than any shadow he’s ever seen. And he’s tiny. Tinier than he can ever remember being. But he had to have been, once. This must be what he’d looked like, once upon a time, then, sans the odd band, and the fragile thinness of his wrists, and the ribs poking out of his torso beneath the tunic. Yet, as he stares down at his reflection, it’s a stranger he sees. Someone else’s kid. 

His mom would have known. 

He falls face-first into the water, and kicks away from the shore.

He ends up at the bottom, and wonders why he’d ever been so afraid of being cut open on the smooth stones that litter the sandy floor. They’re slippery under his grip. There’s one that fits snugly against the inside of him palm, an interesting bluish green color with pretty swirls that only nature itself can make. It fits inside the waist of his pants. It’s smooth on the surface, and when he runs his thumb back over it again and again, it almost feels soft. 

  


It’s not so hot anymore. He’s still chilly, sometimes, when he comes out of the lake still scoping wet for the wind to catch on him. But it feels almost nice. The sun gleams down through the green leaves of the trees in a sunny yellow shine that makes his bones feel warm enough to fight the cold. The air smells crisp and clean in a way he doesn’t think he’s ever smelt before. And it lingers inside his lungs like it wants to stay there forever. There’s moss splashed artistically across that boulders that peak through the underbrush occasionally, there are cattails that sprout up from the lakebed near the shore, and he doesn’t think Rukongai had ever been so beautiful in his mind until he’s seeing it now. 

It’s the nature of itself. There’s something intrinsically pretty about the afterlife in a way that the world of the living couldn’t reach. He wishes he’d seen it sooner, back when he wasn’t a resident himself, but maybe he hadn’t been able to appreciate it then because of that fact. All he’d been able to register was the death that permeated the place even in its liveliest. 

It’s pretty. It feels like _ home_, almost as much as it doesn’t. 

He wants to stay here forever, among the gentle sway of the tree branches in the wind, and the weighty yolk of the moon that hangs overhead at night as if it’s watching over him. 

He’s terrified of becoming lost here, and never getting out again. 

  


There’s pale yellow and green stuff leaking from the hole in his side, no matter how many times he swims in the lake. The veins surrounding it are darker than they should be, probably, and his head is starting to feel lighter than the rest of him. 

The band is tight around his throat. He brings up a finger to rub at it. It’s itching is getting worse. 

His stomach is nearly bending beneath the pressure that sits on it. Sooner or later, he fears it might twist in on itself, consuming it and him until neither of them exists anymore, and then eating away at their surroundings for eternity. Something like a black hole. 

It sounds lonely. 

This night, the stars burn ever brighter. Some of them are so sharp he wonders if he can cut himself on them, because they sparkle like diamonds, like they’re getting closer. Like, tonight, they mean something different than usual. 

The moon is red. 

  
  


There’s a cascade of footsteps pounding against the earth. It’s drawing closer to him, where he sits on the lowest bow of the tree that’s closest to the lake. Sharp calls ring through the forest around them, bouncing off the trunks and branches and boulders and making it all seem much louder and bigger than it really is. 

Something howls chillingly in the distance. 

He slips down from the branch, landing in the shallows with a slight splash. His toes are beginning to become wrinkled, like old grapes, and he faintly wonders if he should start moving away from the water someday. 

The stars are far too bright tonight, washes in the light of the moon and making them look like specks of dust trapped in a solidified puddle of old blood. 

Something screams, and children come dashing across the clearing of the lake, to the other side where there’s a flush cover of low-hanging trees. One of them stumbles to a stop, pointing at him with their mouth agape.

“It’s you!” Kotoro exclaims, and that's when the Hollow bursts forth from the trees, chasing after its prey. 

  


The band around his throat itches. 

  
  
  
  


Something inside his head is singing, the way that a sword or knife would sing if it’s edge was drawn against the inside of its sheath. It’s been awhile since he's had to realize exactly why he’d know what that sounds like. 

_ Lemmeout_.

The children are hunkered beneath the trees and the shrubs, arms tight and interlinked, muscles straining, drawn faces drawn even tighter in horror as they watch in hushed silence while the hollow crunches down on the limp body of one of their own. 

Kotoro drags him along behind them. He’s sitting with his back against a shadowy slip of a girl. Her long, shady, auburn hair is tickling his ear. Somebody whimpers, so quietly it almost isn’t audible, and one of the other kids presses a hand over their mouth. 

The tall boy with the black hair has a mutinous expression on his face as he stares at him, and glares at Kotoro. 

Maybe it’s unfair, because something tells him that the tall boy has a similar hunger to what he’s suppose to have, so doesn’t that make them the same? 

The hollow snaps a femur in its mouth, throwing its head back to swallow the rest like a bird might. The noises coming from its maw, opening and closing, are nightmarish. There’s a slight sniffle, and it comes from behind him, from the tiny little girl clutched tightly in the redhead’s arms. 

_ Lemme o u t. _

Kotoro’s knuckles are white around his wrist. They’re trembling like a dead leaf in the wind. He brings up a hand and rubs at his throat. When he brings it away, and looks down at it, it’s got red smeared across the palm, just barely visible in the moonlight that peaks through the shrubbery. 

He glances out. The hollow is licking its own face with a tongue that slithers in and out through pronged and jagged teeth like a snake. The air that surrounds it feels almost _ wrong_, stale and dank. It makes him feel a little nauseated, and they’re all a few hundred feet away in the undergrowth and thistle. 

The little girl in the redhead’s arms sobs. Loudly. The hollow’s rotating head snaps in their direction, one bulging eye zeroing in on them like a scope. The tall boy with the dark hair curses vibrantly. 

He spreads out his fingers, and pries Kotoro’s hand off of his wrist. The kid looks at him in silence for a moment, face drained of all color, so pale they might glow in the light of the moon, and horror dawns over their face like the sun rising. 

“What are you—?”

_ Lemme—out— _ ** _King_**_! _

He blinks at them, and stands. 

He steps out of the shrubbery. 

“_ No,_” Kotoro breathes in rejection.

He kicks his way free of the underbrush and steps out into the red moonlight. The hollow peers down at him, shadows writhing against its haunches as if it were embodying the worst form of death, saliva dripping from its chomps. It’s panting, and grinning down at him like he’s sat himself on a silver platter and made himself pretty for it. It’s disgusting. 

He can see shadows flitting through the trees out of the corner of his eye as the hollow leans forward and gets ready to pounce the entirety of itself onto his tiny, delicate little body. There are small pinpricks of light being reflected off them in places, almost like stars, but—

They’re too far. They’ll be too late. 

He reaches up to his neck and digs his fingers underneath the band. It’s like using his nails to gauge a hole onto his own skin. It _ hurts_, but he grits his teeth, and bloods spurts out from beneath his fingers as he gets a hold of it. He pulls it away from his throat. There’s a ripping sound that reminds him a little bit of Hell, and the band comes away with skin still attached. He tugs on it, and it sends sharp, throbbing pain all across him. Inside his head, there are howls. 

The hollow is coming closer, but something about it seems slow. Like he’s got all the time in the world, even if he really, really doesn’t. 

He pulls on the band. It’s slippery, slick with crimson, but he pulls even harder and finally—it snaps. 

The hollering inside his head turns to laughter. _ Yes! _

“Shiro,” he says quietly under the sudden silence of the world around him. Not even the wind blows. He points a bloody finger to the hollow that’s not five feet away from him, coming for him with a gaping maw full of jagged, saw-like teeth. 

“_Eat._”

  


Shiro is a contrast against the blackness. He’s so starkly white that he glows. He grins so wide his face splits open, to reveal rows of teeth that shine in the night. The laugh that echoes from deep in his throat sounds like glass being broken upon the rocks at the bottom of the lake. 

He blurs forward, and _ consumes_, and leaves nothing but shadow in his wake. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The vibe for this chapter is a lot different from the pilot chapter, I feel like, but I finally got it to a point where I don’t hate it, so yeet

When he wakes up, the band around his throat is smooth and taut, like it had never been broken in the first place, and he’s lying in a bed with creamy white sheets that feel strangely rough against his skin, not at all as soft as they visibly appear. 

Or maybe it’s the bandages that entomb him that are rough. They wind around his torso like they want to strangle him, they smother his hands and feet like gloves, and there’s one around his neck that covers the band oh-so snugly. It’s stained red when he pulls it off. 

“Uh oh!” A bright and cheery voice pipes up from the side. “Re-chan isn’t gonna like that~!”

He blinks over to find a small girl with pink hair and dark eyes grinning cheekily at him. When she notices his stare, she wiggles her fingers in delight. 

“Heeeey!” It’s her. 

“You’re gonna make Re-chan suuuper mad of you take them all off!” It’s  _ her _ .

He sits up, and reaches out with the bloody bandage. He opens his fingers and lets it fall. They both watch as it flutters to the floor. 

“Yeah,” a gruff voice sounds from the doorway. 

There’s a big man there, arms crossed, with too many scars to count. He’s familiar, too. 

“Best bet is to keep ‘em all on until she says otherwise.” The man says. 

He comes into the room, takes a step toward the bed he’s in, leans down low until their faces are inches apart, and grins widely until he can see each of his individual teeth. 

“She gets pretty  _ scary _ when ya mess with her work.”

He knows these two. He knows who they’re talking about. Something laughs quietly in his head. 

“Anyway!” Yachiru beams, bouncing up from the chair she’d been nesting in to join him on the bed. Immediately, one of his arms becomes a captive, clutched to a chest in a hug, and he realizes how little difference there is between the size of his body and hers. 

Meaning, they’re both about the same size. Absolutely tiny. 

He knew it, already, of course, but now he’s seeing it for real, and—

“Kuro-chan is for me and Kenny, now~!” Yachiru happily informs him. 

He jerks. Blinks stupidly. There’s a sound that tears itself from his throat, that might’ve been a word once, but is only a broken noise of inquiry by the time it leaves his mouth. 

She pouts. In the background, Kenpachi doesn’t do much else other than grin down at him. 

“I  _ said _ ,” she pokes him in the chest. He winces and rubs at it with his free hand. “Kuro-chan belongs to us now!”

_ Belongs _ to—?!

“Now, now,” a placid voice. It’s smooth and promises gentleness, but there’s a steely undertone to it that will never go away, no matter how hard she tries. 

Retsu Unohana sweeps into the room, because she  _ owns _ it, because this is her chosen battlefield, anyone who desecrates it will be dust upon ashes once she’s through with them, and everyone with even the barest lick of reiatsu knows it. 

“No one is going to be belonging to anyone,” she says, but she eyes him with a calculating gaze, something sharp in the recess of her irises. “Not in my infirmary, at the very least.”

“The brat’s not a pet you can claim, Yachiru,” comes another voice, tiredly, from behind her. A head of white hair appears, and Kensei Muguruma shuts the door behind him. 

“News on the other brats?” Kenpachi grunts, and Kensei shakes his head slowly, settling himself down in the chair Yachiru vacated. 

“The whole lot of them were gathered up and shipped up to a lower district. There was talk of them being given board at one of the Shiba charity houses. Soul King knows they have the room. Not like many from Runongai even give them the time of day. I’m pretty sure Kaien is thinking about offering the eldest a sponsorship to the Academy—he’s got the mettle and the power for it, but the kid’s being slow on accepting.”

Kenpachi cackles. “Are they surprised? No Rukongai brat worth their salt is gonna trust the nobles, Shiba or not.” 

“And this one?” Unohana nods quietly toward him, bundled up in bandages and set on the bed with a pink-haired Lieutenant attached to his arm. 

Kensei drags a hand over his face, giving his eyes a good rub. He looks exhausted. 

“Jury’s still out on him, for now. R&D wants him in for testing and a look-over—they just want to see what makes him tick. Pretty sure soutaichou is gonna let them.”

“Kuro-chan is gonna stay with us!” Yachiru disagrees vehemently, tugging his arm hard enough to send him toppling into her. She giggles as he rights himself with a frown. 

Kensei looks up. “S’that his name, then?”

“Eh, probably,” Kenpachi shrugs his burly shoulders. “Yachiru gave it to ‘im.”

“That doesn’t make it—!” Kensei scowls, and then sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Okay, but what’s his  _ name _ ?”

“It’s  _ Kuro _ -chan,” Yachiru insists, and Unohana smiles gently, and they all turn to look at him. 

He stares back at them, startled. He hadn’t really thought about it, but… we’ll, it was close enough, wasn’t it? But why would Yachiru decide on  _ that  _ nickname? His coloring is anything but dark, though maybe...

He shakes his head wordlessly—because even if he wanted to talk the sounds are caught inside his throat and won’t come out—he shrugs, and Unohana covers her smile while Kensei lets out a harsh sigh. 

“ _ No _ , that’s not—”

“Yay!” Yachiru cheers, throwing herself forward to wrap her arms around him. He winces. “Kuro-chan is totally Kuro-chan!”

Yay, he parrots in his head, mental voice sounding about as dead as he feels. A laugh echoes in the recesses of his mind. There’s a chuckle of a different timbre, as well, and he resists a scowl. 

“Give him some space, Yachiru,” Kenpachi barks, reaching a huge, bear paw of a hand forward to grab her by the scruff of her robes and lifting her off the bed. He’s eyeing the serene Unohana warily. “You open the brat’s stitches and she’ll tear you a new one for sure.”

Thankfully, the girls listens, and he—Kuro, it’s best to start habits ahead of time and give them the chance to set—is released. He winces slightly, rubbing at his chest with a bandaged hand. Now that he can breathe again, his ribs see fit to protest and remind him of all the abuse they’ve suffered these last few—how long as it been?

“A—“ His voice croaks in his throat, oddly muffled despite his open mouth, and so he shuts it with a click of his teeth. 

His expression shutters as they all turn to look at him. Kensei leans forward in his seat to get a better look at him, elbows braces on his knees. 

“Can’t quite talk yet, eh?” The man chuckles a bit mirthlessly. “Makes sense. With what happened back there… I’d give it a few days before you find words again, kiddo.”

And he reaches out and pats him gently on the head, ruffling his hair. 

He—Kuro—frowns, cringing away from the touch. It’s too… something. Warmth radiates from Kensei’s hand. He can feel it scourging his scalp even though his hair. It’s too  _ hot _ . 

Kensei gives him a searching look, but slowly retracts his arm and plants the elbow back into his knee. 

The captain turns back to face Unohana, who has been watching silently, eyes as sharp as every, as cold. 

“I’m suppose to ask when you’ll release him,” Kensei says. He doesn’t sound happy about it. “R&D are greedy bastards, they want him now. Got any estimation I can report back with?”

Kuro turns his face toward his lap, and rubs his hands over his legs. They twinge, aching, but that’s easily ignored. The sheets that cover them are white and plush, but there’s just something about them that he can’t put a name to, something just  _ wrong _ . 

Like how the bark of the trees he climbed was wrong, he thinks. 

Like how the leaves that had crunched beneath his feet were wrong. 

The powder-like quality of the dirt, the odd density of the lake water, the stones in its sandy bottom. 

The black band around his neck. The congealed blood of the hollow. His own damn  _ skin _ . 

None of it felt right. All of it was too much… something. A different something for it all, something individual to anything in and of itself. The rocks, too soft. The tree bark, too smooth. The leaves, too firm for their brittleness. 

There’s something not quite right, and he—Kuro—isn’t sure what it is. 

He lifts his hands up, eyes fixated, carefully touching the tips of his fingers to the pads of each of his thumbs. All of them are covered by thin bandages. Thin enough to let sensations and body heat through upon contact. 

He can’t feel anything. His fingertips are numb, like they’re asleep, like they've been asleep all this time, and he realizes they’re not going to wake up. 

Why? He slowly curls one hand into a fist. There’s the expected pressure of his hand clenching in on itself, yes, but it’s somehow less than he remembers it being. Less force? He tightens the fist. Nothing. Not the amount of force, but the reception of that force. It feels weak, too weak to match the strength he’s putting behind the movement, he thinks. 

His hands are covered by larger ones, pale and smooth with long, thin fingers that gently grasp his and uncurl the fist. He blinks at the sight of the four tiny half crescents that have gauged through the bandages. Red blossoms up from each of them. 

… Did he do that?

He glances up. Kenpachi and Yachiru are staring at him with faces that he can’t really read, despite the wide grins they both sport. He’s known them long enough to have realized that the smiles are just a front. He isn’t sure what they’re thinking now. Kensei isn’t in the room anymore. He wonders when the man had left, and how he hadn’t noticed the door opening and closing. 

There’s a sigh, and the hands starts to unravel the bandages of that hand with quick proficiency. He blinks again, jolting himself back to awareness, and looks up to see Unohana examining the new marks decorating his palm. The side of her mouth is tilted down somewhat, but otherwise her face reveals nothing. 

After a moment’s inspection, she glances up to meet his gaze, and blinks. She doesn’t raise an eyebrow, but her lack of an expression has the same feel to it nonetheless. 

“Please refrain from causing yourself further harm,” she says, and it isn’t a request at all. “Even small things like this are detrimental to your overall recovery, as injured as you were when you came to me.”

Kuro stares up at her, and says nothing. Partially because he knows that when he opens his mouth, his voice won’t work, but mostly because—he’s afraid that if he tries, then it  _ will _ , and he’ll say... things. All of the things. Everything he  _ wants _ to say, but can’t. 

He can’t, and not just because his voice doesn’t work. 

Unohana finishes treating the cuts and rebandaging his hand. Then, she stands up from the bedside and strides over the door. With the grace of her walk, it almost looks like she glides across the floorboards without a single sound aside from the whisper of her robes. He stares after her, not sure what to think. 

He glances back down at his hands again, and sighs wearily, letting them drop down into his lap. The action makes the bones inside them ping fully with some sort of distant pain, but he ignores it and leans slowly back into the pillow behind him. 

Yachiru takes the chance to pounce, again. She surges forward to grab for his arm again, and Kuro flinches away from her sudden movement, hand darting to the space over his shoulder, where—

… his sword ... isn't. 

Kuro pauses. His gaze flute off to the side, but nothing. 

“Ha!” A loud bark bounces off the walls of the small infirmary room. 

A big hand descends and lands on top of his skull. It’s heavier than Kensei’s had been, not as gentle, but just as searingly hot. He ducks out from underneath it and sends a glare up at Kenpachi, shoulders stiff and up to his ears with tension. 

Where. 

The captain of the eleventh pulls back and barks another laugh, turning on his heel. 

“Don’t get all pissed off at me, brat,” he explains, wandering over to the far wall, where two familiar hilts lay propped up against it. Two. 

Something tight in Kuro’s chest, sharp and suffocating, eases at the sight of them, even if there was one more than he’d been expecting. The smaller tanto, beside the cleaver that honestly is bigger than he himself is, now—he knows that blade, even if he’s never seen it manifest outside of his own mind. Until now, apparently. And he hadn’t even realized. 

_ Ha,  _ ** _ha_ ** _ , ha.  _

He shakes his head, and reaches out his arms for his soul pieces. He turns his gaze to Kenpachi, eyes sharp and demanding. 

The man huffs, and picks the swords up, hauling the cleaver up and over to rest across his shoulders. 

“Guess you’re gonna grow up to be a pretty big guy, huh?” He asks, jostling Zangetsu. And then roars in laughter, eyes glinting with a wild sort of craze. “ _ Good _ .”

He walks over but takes his time in handing them over. Them,  _ his _ ,  ** _Kuro_ ** **’** ** _s_ ** . Seconds longer than necessary, Kenpachi is being  _ slow _ , and Kuro twitches in irritation and impatience. Give them  _ back _ already! He pulls back his lips across his teeth to voice his complaints, but it doesn’t work like that anymore. A formless, wordless whine escapes instead, and with the tightness in his chest returned, it comes out lowly as a growl. 

It only makes Kenpachi cackle again. “Okay, okay, here—“ and he tosses the swords onto the bed. 

The smaller tanto lands across Kuro’s legs, but he ignores the distantly roaring pain to snatch it up in bandages hand and run his bumbling fingers over its pitch black, shiny surface. 

There’s a whistle that sounds like rushing wind in a narrow canyon, it swoops across the back of his mind like a caress before it’s gone when he lifts his fingers off the blade. There’s that laugh again in its place, with a whispery echo. Familiar. Soothing, but also vaguely alarming. He isn’t sure why. 

_ Ha, ha, ha! _

Shiro. 

Stop being annoying. 

He sets the tanto aside and reaches for the cleaver. The second his hand comes into contact with it, there’s a flash of blinding light. 

“Yeek!” Yachiru squeals, jerking away from him. 

He opens his eyes, blinking against the spots dotting his vision, and looks down to find a katana instead. Still as pitch black as the tanto and the cleaver has been before, shining as the light of the room refracts off of it, still a bit too long for him to properly wield it in this body. There’s a warm chuckle that sounds in his head at that, and he sighs out in a sort of relieved way. Suddenly, he feels a level less exhausted than he has been. Perhaps the cleaver has been draining on his energy? Weird, it never did that before…

“So that’s the shikai state, hm?” Kenpachi looms over the bed and the sword, and  _ him _ . The grin is still there. Kuro wishes the man would just tell him why they were still here. 

“That bankai was pretty huge for you, pipsqueak. I thought at least the shikai would be more your size, but, well… what do I know about zanpakuto?”

Kuro levels the man with a dry look. Kenpachi cackles. 

A hand slams into his back, patting roughly, but not so much that it sent him falling over. Look at that, Kenpachi  _ could _ hold back. 

Would wonders never cease. 

“You’ll grow into it,” he sounds so certain, “and when you do…”

The grin widens, seems more genuine, and there’s a hint of malice behind it now that Yachiru mirrors in her high-pitched giggling. 

“You better fight  _ me _ first, before anyone else. Got that?”

Kuro sighs. 

“Hey, hey. You better do it!”

“Promise, Kuro-chan!” Yachiru jumps up and down on the bed. “Promise, promise!”

He nods slowly. What else, really, can he do? Refuse? Like this, injured in the fourth division and shut in a room with Kenpachi and his daughter both staring eagerly at me, almost as if they’re ready to pounce? 

He doesn’t have a chance. He knows better than that. 

  
  
  


The twelfth comes for him three days later. 

Kensei stands over him with a scowl on his face that manages to look both pissed off and vaguely apologetic, arms crossed over his broad chest and a silent unseated member of the R&D division standing just behind him. 

“Sorry about this,” the white-haired captain says quietly. 

Kuro isn’t sure whether he’s talking to him, or to Captain Unohana, who stands off to the side with a serene expression on her face, aside from the downward tilt of her lips to signify that she is significantly displeased. 

Kensei turns fully to face him, eyebrow twitching. 

“It’s kind of out of my hands,” he admits. “It’s just, nobody’s seen a bankai like yours. Zanpakuto are suppose to purify and cleanse a hollow, not… not  _ devour _ it.” Kensei grimaces. 

Kuro clenches his jaw, and grips the hilt of the smaller tanto in his hand. He loosens his hold on it slightly when he catches the narrow look Unohana shoots him. 

The twelfth division lackey leaned forward, passed Kensei, and gives Kuro a smile. It looks like he’s trying to make it a nice one, but he’s honestly kind of failing. The sight of it makes Kuro’s stomach churn. 

“Just a few tests to determine… well, a number of things,” the unnamed and unseated officer offers delicately. “The captain is incredibly intrigued by this unprecedented phenomena.”

He looks at Kuro, as if he’s actually expecting a reply, and so the boy just slowly nods his head, not looking way from his lap, where his swords lay. He sees Kensei crinkle his nose and make a face from the corner of his eye. 

It almost makes him smile. 

“Anyway,” the male captain says gruffly. “Captain Unohana’s cleared you for…” he hesitates. “... Uh, you’re free to go.”

Kuro looks up and looks at the man. Kensei shifts awkwardly, and Kuro raises his eyebrows. 

“... Directly to the twelfth, yep,” the man sighs, and strides forward to offer Kuro both another apologetic look and a hand up. “Best not to keep them waiting.”

No, it really isn’t. If he doesn’t go now then the twelfth will take the matter of his retrieval into their own hands. And he isn’t sure anyone wants that. 

Kuro accepts the hand, and clutches his swords to his chest with the other. They’re both still bandaged, reiatsu healing techniques don’t work that fast, and his grip is a bit more slippery than he intends, but the proximity of his blades eases the clenching of his stomach somewhat. 

_ Sorry, king _ .

Shut up, he thinks, and allows an unhappy looking Kensei to escort him from the room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ichigo—Sorry, _Kuro_, is a lot more clear-headed in this chapter. He’s got a long way to go before he’ll be Okay, but.... maybe if the twelfth doesn’t irreparably twist him apart, he’ll have the chance to start healing. Hm. I suppose it’s up to fate to decide


	3. Chapter 3

He’d said escorted, but really what happens is Kensei stoops down and scoops him up into his arms, one broad bicep encircling his back as he’s set carefully against Kensei’s hip as the man strides from the room without much fanfare at all. 

Kuro jolts, blinking rapidly for a moment as he attempts to reconcile his new height and movement with his previous position. He reaches forward without thinking about it, and buries one hand in the collar of Kensei’s haori, gripping the fabric and steadying himself. He straightens up a bit and casts a narrow look at the captain of the Ninth. The corner of Kensei’s mouth is ticking up just a barest amount. 

He lets out a huff, clenching the haori in his too-small fist. He’s much too small for it to be at all threatening, and besides. He’s being  _ carried _ . 

No ones ever done that before? Besides mom. 

He isn’t sure what he feels about this. 

The long winding paths of the Thirteen Courts are as identical and confusing as they always have been, like a maze made of only a single corridor that just twists and turns in on itself forever without an end. After all these years and another lifetime in between, it still doesn’t make sense. Kuro doesn’t recognize anything but the familiarity of the architecture. It’s slightly off putting that, even at a time such as now, long before he’d ever even been a concept in his parent’s minds, nothing has changed. Each building looks near exactly like the one next to it, and the home of the Shinigami is a paradox in the way that it feels both vast and never ending and also too small, the walls closing in on them with each step they take inside it. 

“We’ll take the long way,” Kensei decides abruptly, and his attention snaps back to the man’s face. 

He’s looking at Kuro from the corner of his eyes, and his brows are pulled down just slightly more than they normally would be. 

Belatedly, Kuro nods. Kensei probably hadn’t actually been asking for agreement or anything, but the response gets him to turn his eyes ahead of them again, onto the path. The man grunts. 

“Twelfth division is known to be a bit… much. They’re under new management, but things take a while to change, you know?”

Kuro blinks, tilting his head to the side just so. He’s not sure why Kensei’s telling him this, but the slightly awkward set of the man’s eyes tells him that he might be attempting to reassure Kuro somehow. Of what, exactly, is hard to tell. 

“Captain Urahara has implemented several new routines into the division!” The Twelfth lackey pipes up from the side. Kensei and Kuro both jump, having forgotten the man was there. Which in hindsight is slightly concerning. A quiet and amiable R&D lackey is an R&D lackey that is Up To Something, in Kuro’s humble experience. 

“It’s been working well so far! Everyone’s really enjoying it,” the smaller man smiles guilelessly up at both of them. Kensei treats him to a scowl. 

“Well, anyone’s better than that old creep Igressa.” Kensei mutters, adjusting his grip on Kuro, who is no longer paying attention to either of them. 

He runs through what he knows about the Twelth, and what little he’d learned about its history from various sources, mostly Shinigami. In terms of captaincy, only three names come to mind, and that isn’t one of them. Who the hell is Igressa?

The lackey falls silent and thoughtfully once again (suspicious), and there’s no conversation for the rest of the journey across the Seireitei. Eventually, they come upon a sharp corner, and the road doubles in size for the stretch ahead. A colossal wooden gate guarded by two stone pillars that reach into the sky like trees looms just ahead of them, and his neck begins to itch so suddenly that Kuro brings a hand up to slap over the band that wraps around his neck. 

Kensei looks at him sharply. “You good, kid?”

Kuro scratches at the skin around the band, but the itching doesn’t abate whatsoever. 

There’s a thick feeling of molasses that is trying to climb up his chest from his stomach. It feels heavy and hot and tastes sour at the back of his throat. Kuro chokes a little on it and squeezes his eyes shut against the dots that dance before his vision. Flashes of heat entomb his cranium and then shoot down his throat and dance wildly just underneath the band, like it’s all trying to get out and  _ go somewhere _ . It itches. 

Kensei turns, slipping his hands under Kuro’s armpits and lifting him up higher to settle against his chest, arm cradling him from under his knees. “Hey, it’ll be okay. Urahara-taicho isn’t so bad. Whatever nasty rumors you’ve heard of the twelfth—well, they were probably true. But Urahara’s changed it from the inside. You should be fine.”

It’s not as reassuring as Kensei’s probably hoping it sounds, but it does make Kuro realize something. 

_ Not that fucking  _ ** _clown—_ ** _ ! _

It’s Kisuke. Shiro, it’s  _ Kisuke _ . 

The itching lessens just a bit. The heaviness in his chest drops down so abruptly that it makes him feel dizzy and out of breath. Kuro sighs in relief and slumps down against Kensei’s chest. He turns in a bit and presses a sweaty brow into Kensei’s neck, and just focuses on catching his breath. 

A big hand splash itself out across his back. The tips of the fingers dig into the muscles there, and that’s a bit more grounding that anything Kensei can say. 

“It’ll be fine,” the man says anyway. 

Maybe. 

Kuro thinks about Urahara Kisuke, and all the times the man had kept things from him. Important things. Things that could have turned the tide a lot sooner. He thinks about how Kisuke held things too close to his chest, and the times that something blew up in their faces and then  _ Kuro _ was the one who had to deal with it. The times that Kisuke could have lent a hand, but didn’t. When he’d just stood back to observe and take notes. 

But then, he also thinks about the times that Kisuke  _ was _ there. The times when he was there and nobody else was. The times that proved that, despite his many flaws, Kisuke is someone that he could depend on. Maybe that trust can backfire sometimes, but at the end of the day, Kisuke was  _ there _ . He was the one that never left, even when Kuro’s own soul was empty and cold and in tatters. He didn’t leave like the others. Until the end, at least. 

So. Maybe. 

  
  
  
  


When Kisuke hears about a Zanpakutō that displays abilities similar to that of Hollows, he’s already hooked. 

He’s a researcher at heart, a scientist, an inventor. He likes to take things apart and see how they work. Machines, social behaviors,  _ organisms _ . It’s gotten him in trouble more times than he can count, sure, but was that any excuse to stop?  _ Never! _

So when this newest temptation comes along and rears its head, Kisuke’s mind is already scrambling for more information, detailing idea after hypothesis after project. What could he  _ do _ with this? What does it look like in action? Why? Is the power base unique in its entirety, or is it another strand of already discovered Zanpakutō bases? How can he test that? Can it be applied elsewhere? 

He’s so filled to the brim with possibilities that it’s already spilling over. He has a notebook that is already half full of scribbled notes. This is unprecedented, something brand  _ new _ , and Kisuke wants to  _ study _ it until there’s nothing left about it that he doesn’t understand to the very  _ molecule _ . 

When they bring a child in to him, and set the small, impossibly tiny person down on the examination table, Kisuke at first doesn’t even realize what that means, he’s too enthralled in his own thoughts and theories. 

He halfway through prepping a syringe for collecting the first sample when he turns around, away from his desk, and his eyes land on a ruffled mop of strawberry blond hair. Kisuke stops. 

Blank brown eyes stare up at him silently, expectantly, and the skin is much too pale, and there’s  _ bandages _ . Cuts and scrapes litter the skin that  _ is _ visible, and the child has their lips pressed together so tightly that they’ve turned white. They stare up at Kisuke, eyes empty of anything, but he still feels like he’s being quietly, unobtrusively judged. 

What the hell is anyone thinking these days? Kisuke can’t get a viable control sample from  _ this _ .

He sets the syringe off to the side and steps over to the door. Poking his head out, he hollers, “Somebody get me a glass of apple juice and a plate of food! Now!”

Honestly! What were they thinking, sending this tiny little package of skin and bones and starvation and everything else Rukongai can throw at a person to Kisuke without first helping them gain some actual  _ health _ first?

He remembers what it feels like to be hungry and hurt. It may have been hundreds of years ago, but Kisuke’s strongest childhood memories include things he wouldn’t want anyone else to go through. Kisuke looks down at this kid and sees a little bit of himself, in a sudden quick flash of memory. 

He was lucky to have made friends in high places to help pull him out of that abyssal existence. Kisuke looks down at this absolutely tiny specimen of a spirit and thinks, maybe,  _ he _ can be that friend in high places for them. Just for today. Or however long this project takes. 

Because that’s the thing. He isn’t just painfully curious and gets what he wants—this was actually an assignment from the soutaicho himself. 

Make sense of the Hollow-like Zanpakutō, and assess its threat level to the Seireitei. 

Kisuke looks at this tiny, too-thin boy, and thinks that he can’t  _ possibly _ have anything in common with the insatiable monsters of the three worlds, can he?

The door opens and shuts with barely a whisper — he had them oil the hinges of the doors in the twelfth regularly. It’s maddening to get in a zone of concentration only to be wrenched out of it by the squeaky, creaking noises of minions going to and fro. 

Somebody, Kisuke for the life of himself can’t think of their name, steps over and sets a tray down on the examination table. The click of metal on metal makes Kisuke twitch, and he’s demanding that the minion go and fetch a blanket or two, and a pillow while they’re at it, before he can stop himself. 

The boy doesn’t seem to even notice the extra person in the room. He doesn’t look at the tray of food that sits beside him even once. His eyes are trained, unblinking, on Kisuke. Assessing Kisuke, likely trying to figure out Kisuke’s threat level. Kisuke remembers the thought process. 

Though. Not even glancing down at food when it’s set right beside him? That’s concerning.

Kisuke waves the minion out of the room with their new errand and closes the door behind them. He walks over and hops up onto the examination table himself, kicking his feet out a little to stretch his legs, and glances at the boy — his new subject, and the thought makes something cold and uneasy rise in Kisuke’s gut before he can squash it down. 

He’s still being stares at. It’s a little creepy, how blank those eyes are. If only they had just a bit of life in them, if that face could just hold some sort of expression, then he’d be a really adorable kid. 

Kisuke grabs some type of pastry up from the tray that sits between them, and pops it into his mouth. He chews it slowly, and then gestures to the rest. 

“Have at it,” he tells the boy, who blinks — finally! — sedately up at him. “You could use something to build up your strength.”

A light of something enters brown eyes, and they narrow up at Kisuke as if the boy is trying to discern Kisuke’s motivations just by examining Kisuke’s face. Kisuke grabs for another pastry, and busies himself with eating it, matching the boy’s stare with one of his own. 

Slowly, the boy shakes his head. 

Kisuke pauses. “What? Seriously, you should eat something. How long has it been since you last ate?”

An odd expression crosses the boy’s — Kisuke is really gonna have to figure out his name — face, and the child turns away partially to aim his thousand-yard stare at the tiled flooring instead. 

Kisuke purses his lips together tight enough to chase the blood out of them. It’s been a while, then. Probably way too long. Especially considering the reiatsu levels he can sense wafting just barely off of the kid are nowhere near what he’d expected when he first looked at the reports that the Rukongai patrol who’d found him had filed after the fact. 

Kisuke glances over at the two innocuous blades that are propped up against the wall beside his desk, awaiting further study. The boy glances up, and Kisuke feels the brown eyes follow his gaze. The boy stiffens. 

Kisuke turns away from the swords immediately and pokes the tray forward a bit more toward the kid. The metal shrikes mutedly against the metal of the table they sit on. They both wince. 

“You really should eat something.” Kisuke says.

The boy looks back up at him. He hesitates, opens his mouth, and then closes it after a moment when no words come out. The kid shakes his head, and then presses his teeth together in frustration. 

“Nn…” the boy manages to voice, quietly, and then shakes his head again before looking away from the tray. 

Kisuke’s lips twitch at the corner. Stubborn. 

“I mean,” he continues in a drawl, looking pointedly away from his little guest, “they really should have fed you before sending you down here to me. I don’t know what Unohana-taicho was thinking. She’s usually better than this. It’s strange.”

He glances back. The boy is staring at him again. Kisuke wishes he could read minds, right now, just once, because he really, really wants to know what’s going on in that sunbright little head as it tilts to the side, brown eyes wide and something fragile in their depths. 

Kisuke isn’t exactly great with people. He can read them just fine, sure,  _ most _ of the time, but actually dealing with them? It’s easier to mow right over anyone before they can actually draw Kisuke into a conversation. Prattle on about science for long enough, and people will give up and leave you alone. 

Except, this kid is here to stay, for the foreseeable future, and there’s just something about that sad and guarded tilt to the kid’s expression that makes Kisuke’s insides jerk in sympathy and something else. He’ll have to look into it later. 

He reaches down, picks up another pastry, and leans across the space between them to press it to the kids lips. 

The kid jerk back, eyes widening, mouth dropping open in surprise — just enough that Kisuke can shove the pastry in before the boy can lean away. 

The kid makes an odd, breathless wheezing sound, but he closes his mouth around the pastry and starts to chew obediently. The blankness is slowly starting to recede from his face. In fact, there’s a pink hue to his cheeks, now. 

Kisuke wants to coo, just a little bit. Adorable. 

“There!” He cheers, brightly, and the kid is treating him with a faintly annoyed look. Better than the empty stare from earlier. Kisuke will take it. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? Have some more, you look like you need it.”

The kid glowers — barely, but the look is definitely  _ there _ , and it cheers Kisuke up immensely — at him for a moment, before hunching his shoulders and tucking into the food on the tray. 

It’s slow going. A nibble here, a small piece of fruit there. It takes some coaxing from Kisuke to get him to take a few sips of the apple juice in the glass on the side of the plate, but, well. Kisuke’s been in his shoes before. He knows how it goes. 

Once the boy seems to finish, there is barely a dent in the food brought. Kisuke leaves it alone for now, though. He knows how to take his victories where he can get them. 

The door opens, and the minion has returned with blankets, and one pillow tucked under an arm. 

“Ah, good,” Kisuke says. He hops down from the examination table and, in one easy motion, scoops the boy up into his arms. 

The kid goes rigid in shock, but Kisuke pays him no mind, reaching down his free hand to pick the tray up from the table as well. He sets it down on his desk, and then motions the minion forward. 

“Place them there. And then get someone to get the vents going. It’s hot in here! How am I expected to work when I’m sweating through my haori?”

“Captain!” The minion beams once he finished arranging the blankets into a comfy looking nest on the table. Kisuke is a little pleased to see that at least one of his division members has his priorities in check. “I’ll go tell Ara-san immediately!”

“Good, go do that,” Kisuke dismisses him, and then sets the still unresponsive little bundle he’s holding down inside the nest of blankets.

The minion disappears out the door once again, steps quick, but Kisuke’s too busy watching the boy stare down at the pillow like he’s never seen one before in his life. 

“Damn,” he sighs, rubbing a tired hand down the side of his face. He ignores how the boy’s attention instantly switches to him, how the kid stares up at him like he thinks if he stares long enough, Kisuke will reveal his true nature. 

“Damn,” he says again, and turns back to look sightlessly at the still mostly full tray of food sitting innocently on his desk. 

It’s gonna be awhile before Kisuke can get his answers, isn’t it? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kisuke: *has a kid dropped into his lap with like zero warning*  
Kisuke: time to be an Responsible Adult, I guess, since no one else will


End file.
